By Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't working on computers and scanners, he's spending time with his wife and kids, or...

Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't...

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For all we know, there could be dozens more cases of obstruction that the public doesn't know about.

This author A Pattern Of Obstruction

Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't...

Author Sponsor

For all we know, there could be dozens more cases of obstruction that the public doesn't know about.

This author A Pattern Of Obstruction

Robert Cleveland
Contributor Robert Cleveland is the IT Director for a document management services company. When he isn't...

Author Sponsor

For all we know, there could be dozens more cases of obstruction that the public doesn't know about.

This author A Pattern Of Obstruction

Gina McCarthy
Regina "Gina" McCarthy, born 1954, is an American public administrator and an environmental health and air quality expert, currently administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. | Photo: Archives | Gina Mccarthy, Epa, Environment, Democrat, Health, Air Quality,

Dude, where's my hard drive?
Published on July 17, 2014

There seems to be an epidemic of hard drive failure in our federal government. Ever since the IRS came to Congress with the news that so many of Lois Lerner's emails had disappeared due to a hard drive failure, more and more federal agencies are jumping on the "hard drive failure" bandwagon.

When the hard drives of Lois Lerner and six other key IRS officials all failed within the same timeframe - the officials and the time frame that Congress just happened to be investigating - it was highly improbable.

But then, a few weeks ago, EPA Chairwoman Gina McCarthy testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, informing them that yet another fortuitous hard drive failure had occurred, this one belonging to a former EPA employee whose emails, once again, were key to the committee's investigation. Of course, this hard drive, like the ones at the IRS, was destroyed, meaning Congress would have no chance of recovering any data from it.

And, of course, it didn't stop there. The Oversight Committee was informed that yet another federal employee, this one with the FEC, lost yet another hard drive, which was, of course, shredded like all the others. In this case, the lost emails would have proved that the former FEC employee had criminally violated the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from engaging in partisan political activities while on government time or using government resources. Even though this former FEC employee has admitted to violating the Hatch Act, criminal prosecution is impossible without the evidence that was on that hard drive.

Oh, and by the way, that former FEC employee just so happened to have worked for Lois Lerner before she transferred to the IRS.

We have now moved beyond the improbable and into the totally freaking impossible.

Maybe the National Academy of the Sciences should commission a study. By now, they should have pretty solid evidence of a causal relationship between Congressional investigations and failed hard drives within the federal government.

Of course, this is all just the latest part of what has been a long and storied history of the Obama administration's continued obstruction of Congress.

It started with the Department of Justice's obstruction of Congress's investigation into Fast and Furious, the gunrunning scandal where the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms strong-armed gun shops into allowing straw purchasers to buy guns that they knew would end up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. The Department of Justice obstructed Congress's investigation for months, intimidating whistle-blowers and refusing to turn over documents critical to the investigation. Attorney General Eric Holder found himself facing charges of Contempt of Congress for his role in the obstruction, a charge which he chalks up to partisanship and, I'm sure, to racism.
Then there was Benghazi, where four Americans were killed in an attack by Al-Qaida militants. The Administration's lies about the attack started mere hours after the attack ended. The State Department has kept the survivors hidden, and the most Congress has been able to get from the Obama administration is a big "What difference does it make" from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
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And let's not forget the incident between Louie Gohmert and Eric Holder back in April. In this case, the Attorney General had refused to turn documents over to Congress, though they apparently had no problem turning those same documents over to suspected terrorists.

The most disturbing thing is that these are just the cases of the Obama Administration's obstruction that have made it to the media. For all we know, there could be dozens more cases of obstruction by the Obama administration that the people don't know about simply because the mainstream media hasn't considered them to be newsworthy.

While President Obama loves to complain about how extremely uncooperative Congressional Republicans are every time he wants to expand the size and reach of the federal government, put all of these things together, and it adds up to a major movement within the Obama administration to engage in criminal obstruction of Congressional oversight.

A Pattern Of Obstruction: Details

"A Pattern Of Obstruction" was first released on 7.17.2014 and last updated on 10.17.2018 6:53 AM EDT.
Robert Cleveland submitted this feature to AND Magazine.
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